Did anon just release the officer's name and address?
Haven't seen that. I did see something on my Twitter feed saying Anon released photos of the FPD Director's House and he has Confederate Flags in there. :-#
Did anon just release the officer's name and address?
Haven't seen that. I did see something on my Twitter feed saying Anon released photos of the FPD Director's House and he has Confederate Flags in there. :-#
Oh. Well then.
I really hope the FBI are taking this ish seriously as I have serious doubts about local law enforcement doing so given the latest (not interviewing the friend/witness).
Ok, so some racist asshat was yelling shit at the people cleaning up one of the gas stations. He filmed himself doing so. Anon traced it (?) and it was an off duty police officer.
I'll say, given this shitstorm I don't blame these people for wanting to burn shit to the ground.
As Chris Rock said "I'm not saying it's right, but I understand".
This type of incident and subsequent reaction from the police doesn't spring fully formed out of the ether. I'm betting Ferguson was a messed up place to be black and this was the last straw.
this is how I feel about it. Should people be rioting, looting, etc? no of course not, peaceful protests, yada yada yada. But there comes a breaking point and i don't blame the people of Ferguson/St Louis for having reached theirs, especially as this clusterfuck continues and the police seem to be stonewalling any type of investigation or action.
and the riots, protests etc are keeping this situation in the national spotlight, which I think is a good thing.
Ok, so some racist asshat was yelling shit at the people cleaning up one of the gas stations. He filmed himself doing so. Anon traced it (?) and it was an off duty police officer.
Well good, though it's probably too much to hope for/expect that he'll be fired. Off duty or not, this clearly show a bias that would impact his duties as a police officer.
Ok, so some racist asshat was yelling shit at the people cleaning up one of the gas stations. He filmed himself doing so. Anon traced it (?) and it was an off duty police officer.
1. A Ferguson officer? 2. Those folks were cleaning up/ following "the way." And they were still shit on. 3. Why isn't anyone saying "This is not the way" to condemn the riots?
Ok, so some racist asshat was yelling shit at the people cleaning up one of the gas stations. He filmed himself doing so. Anon traced it (?) and it was an off duty police officer.
1. A Ferguson officer? 2. Those folks were cleaning up/ following "the way." And they were still shit on. 3. Why isn't anyone saying "This is not the way" to condemn the riots?
1. A Ferguson officer? 2. Those folks were cleaning up/ following "the way." And they were still shit on. 3. Why isn't anyone saying "This is not the way" to condemn the riots?
1. Yes'm
Holy fucking shit. One with Confeddy flags in his house, one hurling slurs and "Go back to Africa, one calling the assembled blacks animals and relishing the moment they bring it. Yeah, Michael totally assaulted that officer. This pd's account of the incident is totally credible.
They're keeping the airspace clear for police helicopters. (Hell, maybe even the national guard for all I know.)
Helicopters with a dome?
Only if we're lucky. (I say this because who doesn't want to see a dome deployed?! I don't actually want Ferguson domed. [Please don't come after me anon.])
Reason: TO PROVIDE A SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITIES
I'm sorry? Ferguson is part of the Ukraine now? Why would you do this? Why are they reacting like this? It is clear as day they are hiding some serious shit.
WASHINGTON -- As authorities attempted to contain the protests that broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer, new video shows that even protesters who were standing in their own backyards were the targets of tear gas by officers.
On Saturday, Aug. 9, Michael Brown, 18, was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis. What happened before the shooting remains unclear, with police saying that Brown assaulted the officer and eyewitnesses denying that account, arguing that Brown was killed while attempting to surrender.
In the days since, Ferguson has been shaken up by protests from the city's African-American residents. People raising their hands in the air and saying, "Hands up, don't shoot," have become a symbol of the demonstrations.
On Monday night, police in riot gear went down West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, attempting to clear the street, according to the St. Louis-based Riverfront Times.
Richie West, 24, and a handful of friends and family members were watching from his backyard. They decided to protest -- still on his property -- shouting with their hands in the air, "You go home! You go home!"
Police told them to disperse and then fired tear gas at them. West continued to shout, "This is my backyard! This is my shit!" And police fired again.
"It's pure ignorance," West told the Riverfront Times. "I pay property taxes here. I should be able to be in my backyard any time."
The Ferguson Police Department did not return The Huffington Post's request for comment.
Community anger appears to have been simmering for quite some time in Ferguson, which has mostly African-American residents but very few African-American public officials. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Ferguson's police chief and mayor are white. Of the six City Council members, one is black. The local school board has six white members and one Latino. Of the 53 commissioned officers on the police force, three are black, said Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson."
Blacks are also disproportionately pulled over by police in Ferguson. Whites make up about one-third of the city's population but accounted for just 12.7 percent of traffic stops by Ferguson police last year. African-Americans made up 93 percent of the arrests following those stops, yet whites were more likely to be caught with contraband.
On Saturday a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager on his way to college this week. Brown was shot multiple times, though his hands were in the air. His uncovered body was left in the street for hours, as a crowd from his neighborhood gathered to stand vigil. Then they marched down to the police station. On Sunday evening, some folks in the crowd looted a couple of stores and threw bottles at the police. Monday morning was marked by peaceful protests.
The people of Ferguson are angry. Outraged. The officer’s story is dubious. Any black kid with sense knows it is futile to reach into an officer’s vehicle and take his gun. That story is only plausible to people who believe that black people are animals, that black men go looking for cops to pick fights with. Absurdity. Eyewitness accounts like these make far more sense.
It seems far easier to focus on the few looters who have reacted unproductively to this tragedy than to focus on the killing of Michael Brown. Perhaps looting seems like a thing we can control. I refuse. I refuse to condemn the folks engaged in these acts, because I respect black rage. I respect black people’s right to cry out, shout and be mad as hell that another one of our kids is dead at the hands of the police. Moreover I refuse the lie that the opportunism of a few in any way justifies or excuses the murderous opportunism undertaken by this as yet anonymous officer.
The police mantra is “to serve and to protect.” But with black folks, we know that’s not the mantra. The mantra for many, many officers when dealing with black people is apparently “kill or be killed.”
It is that deep irrational fear of young black men that continues to sit with me. Here’s the thing: I do not believe that most white people see black people and say, “I hate black people.” Racism is not that tangible, that explicit. I do not believe most white people hate most black people. I do not believe that most police officers seek to do harm or consciously hate black people. At least I hope they don’t.
I believe that racism exists in the inexplicable sense of fear, unsafety and gnawing anxiety that white people, be they officers with guns or just general folks moving about their lives, have when they encounter black people. I believe racism exists in that sense of mistrust, the extra precautions white people take when they encounter black people. I believe all these emotions have emerged from a lifetime of media consumption subtly communicating that black people are criminal, a lifetime of seeing most people in power look just like you, a lifetime of being the majority population. And I believe this subconscious sense of having lost control (of the universe) exists for white people, at a heightened level since the election of Barack Obama and the continued explosion of the non-white population.
The irony is that black people understand this heightened anxiety. We feel it, too. We study white people. We are taught this as a tool of survival. We know when there is unrest in the souls of white folks. We know that unrest, if not assuaged quickly, will lead to black death. Our suspicions, unlike those of white people, are proven right time and time again.
I speak to this deep psychology of race, not because I am trying to engage in pop psychology but because we live in a country that is so deeply emotionally dishonest about both race and racism. When will we be honest enough to acknowledge that the police have more power than the ordinary citizen? They are supposed to. And with more power comes more responsibility.
Why are police calling the people of Ferguson animals and yelling at them to “bring it”? Because those officers in their riot gear, with their tear gas and dogs, want a justification for slaughter. But inexplicably in that moment we turn our attention to the rioters, the people with less power, but justifiable anger, and say, “You are the problem.” No. A cop killing an unarmed teenager who had his hands in the air is the problem. Anger is a perfectly reasonable response. So is rage.
We are talking about justifiable outrage. Outrage over the unjust taking of the lives of people who look like us. How dare people preach and condescend to these people and tell them not to loot, not to riot? Yes, those are destructive forms of anger, but frankly I would rather these people take their anger out on property and products rather than on other people.
No, I don’t support looting. But I question a society that always sees the product of the provocation and never the provocation itself. I question a society that values property over black life. But I know that our particular system of law was conceived on the founding premise that black lives are white property. “Possession,” the old adage goes, “is nine-tenths of the law.”
But we are the dispossessed. We cannot count on the law to protect us. We cannot count on police not to shoot us down in cold blood. We cannot count on politics to be a productive outlet for our rage. We cannot count on prayer to soothe our raging, ragged souls.
This is what I mean when I say that we live in a society that is deeply emotionally dishonest about racism. We hear a story each and every week now about how some overzealous officer has killed another black man, or punched or beaten or choked a black woman. This week we heard two stories – Mike Brown in Missouri and John Crawford in Ohio. These are not isolated incidents. How many cops in how many cities have to murder how many black men — assault how many black women — before we recognize that this shit is not isolated? It is systemic from the top to the bottom.
Every week we are having what my friend Dr. Regina Bradley called #anotherhashtagmemorial. Every week. We are weak. We are tired. Of being punching bags and shooting targets for the police. We are tired of well-meaning white citizens and respectable black ones foreclosing all outlets for rage. We are tired of these people telling us what isn’t the answer.
The answer isn’t looting, no. The answer isn’t rioting, no. But the answer also isn’t preaching to black people about “black-on-black” crime without full acknowledgment that most crime is intraracial. The answer is not having a higher standard for the people than for the police. The answer is not demanding that black people get mad about and solve the problem of crime in Chicago before we get mad about the slaughter of a teen boy just outside St. Louis.
We can be, and have been, and are mad about both. Violence is the effect, not the cause of the concentrated poverty that locks that many poor people up together with no conceivable way out and no productive way to channel their rage at having an existence that is adjacent to the American dream. This kind of social mendacity about the way that racism traumatizes black people individually and collectively is a festering sore, an undiagnosed cancer, a raging infection threatening to overtake every organ in our body politic.
We are tired of these people preaching a one-sided gospel of peace. “Turn the other cheek” now means “here are our collective asses to kiss.” We are tired of forgiving people because they most assuredly do know what they do.
Mike Brown is dead. He is dead for no reason. He is dead because a police officer saw a 6-foot-4, 300-plus-pound black kid, and miscalculated the level of threat. To be black in this country is to be subject to routine forms of miscalculated risk each and every day. Black people have every right to be angry as hell about being mistaken for predators when really we are prey. The idea that we would show no rage as we accrete body upon body – Eric Garner, John Crawford, Mike Brown (and those are just our summer season casualties) — is the height of delusion. It betrays a stunning lack of empathy, a stunning refusal of people to grant the fact of black humanity, and in granting our humanity, granting us the right to the full range of emotions that come with being human. Rage must be expressed. If not it will tear you up from the inside out or make you tear other people up. Usually the targets are those in closest proximity. The disproportionate amount of heart disease, cancers, hypertension, obesity, violence and other maladies that plague black people is as much a product of internalized, unrecognized, unaddressed rage as it is anything else.
Nothing makes white people more uncomfortable than black anger. But nothing is more threatening to black people on a systemic level than white anger. It won’t show up in mass killings. It will show up in overpolicing, mass incarceration, the gutting of the social safety net, and the occasional dead black kid. Of late, though, these killings have been far more than occasional. We should sit up and pay attention to where this trail of black bodies leads us. They are a compass pointing us to a raging fire just beneath the surface of our national consciousness. We feel it. We hear it. Our nostrils flare with the smell of it.
James Baldwin called it “the fire next time.” A fire shut up in our bones. A sentient knowledge, a kind of black epistemology, honed for just such a time as this. And with this knowledge, a clarity that says if “we live by the sword, we will die by it.”
Then, black rage emerges prophetic from across the decades in the words of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay who penned these words 95 years ago in response to the Red Summer of 1919.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
I offer no answers. I offer only grief and rage and hope.
Richie West, 24, and a handful of friends and family members were watching from his backyard. They decided to protest -- still on his property -- shouting with their hands in the air, "You go home! You go home!"
Police told them to disperse and then fired tear gas at them. West continued to shout, "This is my backyard! This is my shit!" And police fired again.
"It's pure ignorance," West told the Riverfront Times. "I pay property taxes here. I should be able to be in my backyard any time."
...
Blacks are also disproportionately pulled over by police in Ferguson. Whites make up about one-third of the city's population but accounted for just 12.7 percent of traffic stops by Ferguson police last year. African-Americans made up 93 percent of the arrests following those stops, yet whites were more likely to be caught with contraband.
This is terrible - in his own backyard?!?! That is sooooo very wrong and unethical not to mention it might be illegal!!
Post by downtoearth on Aug 12, 2014 14:25:03 GMT -5
summer - no idea what that tank vehicle is? But really, isn't that cop breaking the law by being on top of a vehicle without a seatbelt? Plus OSHA laws require that you are tied off if you are on an elevated surface >6ft and don't have hand railings. I want someone to send this to OSHA!